Brazilian jazz pianst Hélio Celso has enjoyed a successful career in Japan, and this included working with Lisa Ono, Japan's most acclaimed bossa nova artist. They recorded 4 CDs together and shared a musical partnership lasting nearly 15 years. Below Hélio shares a few thoughts about his association with Lisa from the very earliest days of her career.
My encounter with Lisa was more of a destiny thing. A call you know . . .
27 January 1981. I arrived in Japan at the request of a famous Brazilian bass player, Alberto Beserra, for a six month working contract at Saci Pererê, the first Brazilian place in Tokyo. The same day I played with Alberto, Armando Bento de Arajujo Filho on drums, and Lisa.
The owner of Saci Pererê is Toshiro Ono, Lisa's father. So, a month after I started playing at his place, Mr. Ono invited me to teach music to Lisa, and soon afterward we began to date. When Mr. Ono found that out, he sent Lisa to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, and at the same time I came back to Brazil for professional reasons, where later Lisa came to see me and we lived one year together in Copacabana. That was '81, '82. We played at Four Seasons in Ipanema and Viro da Ipiranga in Laranjeiras and performed a wonderful concert at the University of Fundão in Rio de Janeiro. Those days we were playing piano and guitar and vocal.
Then, back in Japan, Lisa and I decided to make up a quartet. The bass player was Nilson Matta and the drummer was Everaldo Ferreira. But in '83 and '84 Lisa had no large audience, being restricted to those who would come to Saci Pererê. Around Christmas '84 Lisa and I went to the U.S. where we played in the concert "Sound of Brazil" with American musicians, and we experienced great success. Then we went to Brazil and played with a lot of people in Rio's night music scene, including Leny Andrade.
When we got back to Japan, great success awaited us. The master of this success was Mr. Koda of Jazzspot J, where we played frequently. Mr. Koda instituted a show with the two of us starting at midnight. In very few weeks, the house was full every night, and then overflowing with people. Then something vey interesting happened. NHK, Japan's national broadcasting station, filmed a variety of groups presenting themselves at "J" and ours was one of them. Our presentation was the top one among all of them, and that was what put us on the road to success. Those days Tadao Shimada was the drummer, Yutaka Yokoyama the bass player, and Masayuki Suzuki the saxophonist. It all started there. We recorded Lisa's first album Catupiry. And I guess you know what came after.
About working with Lisa, I think I contributed to her in a few ways. I taught her a bit of harmony when playing the guitar, and she inherited from me the Tijuca intonation. As her ear is great, fantastic, she had no trouble at all learning things in spite of her young age. Regarding some of the artists that Lisa has worked with over the years, I think that Oscar Castro-Neves and Toots Thielemans are worth special mention, as well as Raul de Souza, who played seven different trombones on the arrangements I wrote, and who now lives in Paris. And Lisa as a person, is just wonderful. Besides her musicality and her fast way of understanding things (much faster than mine), she has a great sense of humor.
Hélio Celso Suarez
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2003
For more information about Hélio Celso, please visit his official website http://www.heliocelso.homestead.com. Hélio Celso's latest CD is called "Cordas e Marfim" (English translation - "Strings and Ivory"). Respected Brazilian jazz critic José Domingo Raffaelli described Cordas e Marfim as "a serious candidate for one of the best of the year." Please visit Hélio's official site for infromation about how to purchase this CD.
